Chapter 11
CHAPTER 11
A rthur
The Artifice resides in a large building in the middle of the Wasteland. It is the one solid structure in hundreds of miles. I drive to it, and park outside it, in a big clear space that was once reserved for that very purpose. The desert is full of patches like this. Parking lots survive where buildings do not. There’s probably a moral in that, but I am too far past morality to even try to understand it.
We are fortunate that the location of the hallowed intellect is not a secret.
Everybody knows where the Artifice is. Many years ago offerings were left on the stones outside the building, which is a large, glass-walled red and yellow construction. It is not the sort of place that looks like it houses the consciousness that forever altered the world, but that is because it is a truly ancient location.
People imagine that soldiers upon soldiers must guard this place, but the truth is the only sentinels are lizards that sun themselves on shattered rocks and scurry away when my shadow falls across them.
It is low-slung, single storied. It is unassuming. But that does not mean it is stupid or insensate.
I know it knows who I am. I know it knows I am here. I have to hope it does not know why I have come.
A box outside the building crackles to life as I approach.
“How can I help you, Archon-General Darken?”
The voice is faint, but knowledgeable.
I feel a tremor run through me. I never thought I would stand in the presence of the Artifice itself. I would never have dared to come this close, knowing that I am not deserving of being here. The Artifice is not to be trifled with.
“I was hoping to be allowed to stand in your presence. I have lost my personal guard, and there is nobody else who could give me guidance as I stand on the precipice of fatherhood.”
The words seem self-involved and petty compared to the broader scope of the Artifice’s interests, but I am hoping that it will consider me petty and self-involved. Most people are.
“I do not entertain individuals, Archon-General, but I will make an exception for you. Come around to the main doors.”
The doors have been blasted by the sand and the sun. Once upon a time they would have been clean and clear. We tried to replace them, but the workers sent out were evaporated by the weaponry on the roof. I am fortunate to still be standing here, rather than being a pile of carbon.
They slide open to allow me to step inside. The interior of the building has a faded gray and white checkered floor. There are multiple tables and booths. Vinyl bench seats have cracked and faded, and thin laminate on the tables is likewise damaged. Some of the tables still have rectangular oblongs containing paper napkins.
The Artifice sits in the middle of it all, a glowing blue screen with the word welcome displayed across it.
“Hello,” it says. “How can I help you?”
“You can’t help me,” I say, miserable.
“I was made to help all mankind. Even you, Arthur.”
It knows my name and it uses it with what I imagine to be a sort of affection. I am desperate for the world to show me some kindness. I have nothing left to give except what I have always given, my loyalty and my faith.
“I have been sent to deactivate you,” I tell the source of all human peace. “I have been corrupted by a group of rebels who have taken my bride hostage and intend to kill her if I do not succeed.”
The Artifice glows brighter for a moment, calculating all known variables, and plenty of unknown ones besides. This is an entity of pure knowledge.
“In that case, you must turn me off,” it says.
“But… that would deactivate you.”
“Yes, but you have no choice. If you do not turn me off, you and your wife will be killed. You have a personal interest in that outcome not coming to pass. Therefore, you have no choice but to turn me off. It is only logical.”
“But all of humanity depends on you, and I am just one man,” I say, stunned at the intellect’s response. I expected something else. Fear, maybe. Anger, definitely. Swift and terrible retribution, absolutely.
“Then do not turn me off.”
I stare at the faceless, eyeless, being-less entity, and I try to understand what it is doing.
“The plug is over there,” it says. “By the slushie machine. You just need to pull it out.”
This is a trap. Or a test. It has to be. One or the other, or more likely, both.
“I know you wouldn’t have your power source solely linked into one power point on an archaic connection. That wouldn’t make any sense.”
The Artifice says nothing. It sits next to me, humming in that indifferent blue fashion. It is a machine. I have to realize that. It operates on pure logic. That is the benefit of it. It also means that it has no attachment to being on or off, existing or not existing. It is unburdened by any of the concerns that drive my life.
There are as many perceptions of the Artifice as there are people who know about it. But almost all of them regard it as the ultimate authority, an intellect of unparalleled wisdom and gravitas.
When it speaks, it does so with a light lilt, a nearly feminine tone. It speaks simply, in a way that indicates very little concern for or understanding of its situation. It is almost childlike. And I am here to destroy it.
I hesitate only for a moment, because every second I spend not doing what I need to do is another moment the love of my life is in enemy hands. I walk to the plug, an old, greasy, dusty piece of rubbery plastic plugged into an even older, greasier socket in the wall. I reach down and pull it out.
The hum immediately lessens. When I look back, I see that the light has dimmed. It goes out completely under my astonished gaze. The Artifice has been ruling the civilized world for more than a hundred years—and I just annihilated it.
Or did I?
A rush of guilt assails me and I plug it back in. The humming starts immediately. The blue glow returns slowly.
“Are you okay?” I feel silly asking the question, but it would feel worse not to ask it at all.
The humming intensifies for a moment, then cuts out, before coughing into a lower range.
“Sorry,” the Artifice explains. “I’m part fridge.”
“Pardon me?”
“I was put together with parts from what were common household items at the time. I hum because I am part refrigerator. Would you like to turn me off again?”
“I think I have to,” I say. “Just to prove that I can. I don’t know if I will be able to turn you on again.”
“Oh. That’s okay.”
It feels like it shouldn’t be okay, but who am I to doubt the Artifice?
I turn it off again. The hum fades, the light dissolves. There is darkness and stillness in the interior of this hallowed place. I feel an odd sense of peace. I have done the unthinkable. I have made a decision that will change the course of history. I have acted out of pure selfishness. But I have acted, and that means it is all over.
I pick up the radio I was given, and utter the two words I know Lance wants to hear. “It’s done.”
Clouds of dust immediately begin to rise in the middle distance. Rebel forces are coming to dismantle the Artifice.
I feel protective and helpless at the same time. I have dedicated my life to protecting this intellect, which I now understand to be entirely innocent.
They are coming, and I cannot stop them.
My failing is greater than I can describe. My entire career has been based around destroying rebellion and protecting the Artifice. But the rebels were in my inner circle all along, and I have protected nothing, not the Artifice, not my bride, not my most loyal servant.
The feeling I have watching the worst-case scenario unfold right in front of me is indescribable. After an illustrious career, I have lost everything. I should have known this day would come. All generals are eventually defeated. It is inevitable.
Time slows, and yet marches on regardless. The clouds get larger, then resolve into vehicles, and finally the vehicles become people. They are reluctant at first, but as they approach the building without being cut down by advanced weapons fire, they become emboldened.
The doors swing open wide, and Lance ducks under the door frame. He stands in the midst of what now feels like a mundane space like any other.
“Where is it?”
I point to the screen.
He lifts a metal reinforced fist, and lets out a crude laugh as he brings it down on top of the device. It smashes into fragments of plastic and pieces of wire and circuit board, screen cracking and then falling apart in a slow fall of shards. I watch this with a numb sensation.
The others go about smashing other things in the building, destroying pieces of history that have sat here quite innocently for decades. They all want to have had a part in this, regardless of the fact that I was the one who did the deed. Lance has already begun to take the credit, such as it is.
History will reflect that he ‘defeated’ the Artifice, when in truth he has done nothing more than the equivalent of breaking a piece of old trash. Without the animating force of energy, the Artifice is nothing, and he has done nothing.
“Intruders detected.”
A very calm, infinitely more mature voice speaks suddenly. Everybody freezes in place. The rebels, most of whom have the absolute nerve to be dressed in Artifice armor themselves, stare around in horror.
“I thought you turned it off,” Lance says to me.
“I did. It told me where the plug was.”
“ It told you? ” His eyes narrow at me. “What do you mean it told you? Why would it tell you how to deactivate it?”
“Because it didn’t care. Humans care if they’re alive or not. Machines don’t.”
Just as those words come out of my mouth, a projectile bullet inserts itself right where Lance’s frontal lobe used to be. His skull comes apart in front of me in a slow cascade of gray matter and bone. At precisely the same time, bullets hit each and every one of the other rebels, all equally neatly placed. I hear one great gunshot, as the building fires a barrage simultaneously with complete accuracy.
One moment they are here, the next they are gone.
The voice speaks again.
“Reset mode engaged. Destroying civilization in 10… 9…”
“Wait!” I cry out. Have I truly ended the world so casually and carelessly? Will that be the wages of my sin here today? “Please! Listen to me!”
“8… 7… 6…”
“I will do anything!”
I am pleading with an entity that does not care for anything besides its own processes. I know I cannot stop it. I couldn’t turn it off, and I cannot prevent the revenge it is going to take on the world at large.
“Please! Have mercy on us all!”
“Oh, relax, Arthur. You always took all of this far too seriously.”
With those words, the doors behind the counter open. Three middle-aged men emerge. I recognize them instantly, though it is entirely impossible that what I am seeing is real.
“ Part fridge ,” one of them laughs. “Ridiculous. I don’t know how you do it, Terence.”
“I’ve been waiting eighty years to use that line. I almost forgot!”
I stare in astonishment.
These are the original engineers. The creators of the Artifice. These are the men who brought peace to the planet.
Yokohama, Wallace, and Patel. Their names are legendary. But they should be long dead. They should not be in their prime, looking as though they are no more than thirty years old. I am older than them, and they were born over a century and a half ago.
Have I lost my mind? Am I seeing some kind of trauma-induced hallucination?
“Hello, Arthur,” Ari Patel says with a broad grin. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Or three ghosts,” Shinji Yokohama replies. He is the tallest of the three engineers. All of them have long dark hair and glasses. I don’t know if it’s a chosen uniform, though I am almost certain the glasses are unnecessary.
“How is this possible?”
“With enough technology, everything is possible. We reveal ourselves only to a select few, those who deserve to know what the truth of the world is…”
“Or for the lulz,” Wallace says.
There are pieces of my ex-best friend and more recently, mortal enemy’s brain on my shirt. I do not find any of this amusing. I find it confusing and tragic.
“What is happening?”
“You came to destroy our greatest achievement, the thing that keeps us safe, and we decided to take pity on you because we know you’re being blackmailed, and because you have served us all your life without question. Don’t worry about your wife. She’s fine. We dispatched a contingent of tried and tested loyalists to retrieve her,” Ari says. He has a soothing tone to his voice, and I am glad to hear that Mila is unharmed.
“Did you know? That Lance was a traitor?”
“Come with us,” Shinji says. “You need tea.”
I follow, because that is an order, and I know how to follow orders. I go back into the room beyond the counter, which is a kitchen. It has not been used in generations. A portal in the floor is open, and stairs lead down into a basement. There’s another basement beneath that. The second basement contains a room full of screens and very old tech. Keyboards. There haven’t been keyboards in the world for decades. There are stacks of them down here, along with a great many devices I do not recognize.
There are screens everywhere, displaying what I suppose must be old computer code. I don’t recognize the symbols, but they stream through one screen into another.
“What is that?”
“Oh, that?” Wallace grins. “That’s all the people in the world. I know it doesn’t look like much to you, but we look at those screens and we see blondes, brunettes, the occasional redhead. That is the world as we know it.”
I look again, trying to imagine how it must be to see all of the world reduced in such a way, entire lives reduced to simple symbols. No wonder everything is easy for the Artifice. Things are easy when they’re nothing but a squiggly line or half a box.
This could appear to be a great haven for and repository of old technology, but the overall ambiance is somewhat tempered by the fact that it otherwise looks and smells like the quarters of a fresh batch of untrained recruits. There are bags of food open everywhere, old unwashed plates stacked high, and more cups than I can count containing endless unfinished beverages.
I feel my eye twitch, and I repress the urge to order them to clean up immediately. The words are stuck in my throat, begging to come out like a pack of ferocious hounds straining at their leashes. But these improbably alive men just spared my life and destroyed my enemies. So I hold my tongue.
“Are there any clean cups?”
“It’s Shinji’s turn to clean,” Wallace says.
“You haven’t done any dishes in twenty years,” Ari replies, rolling his eyes. “We had a robot, but she broke. Fortunately, I think we have a solution, indirectly provided by you, as it happens.” He presses a button. “Please bring us tea.”
I wait to see what technological wonder is going to come. The last thing I expect is to see Lydia come through a door, carrying a tray of tea, and smiling at me, very much alive. I feel a rush of joy, along with an uncanny sensation. I am glad she is standing in front of me, but I also feel that she should not be standing in front of me. Something deeply unnatural is happening right now.
“Lydia!”
She smiles at me. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I was sent for, and I was saved. The Artifice knows all.”
She sets the tray down, and I stride over to her, wrapping my arms around her in the tightest of embraces. I feel her breathe, her chest expanding against mine, the sound of her exhalation and inhalation so completely normal.
I held her in my arms as she died only hours ago. Her blood still stains my clothes. I am wearing her death, and yet she is standing in front of me, impossibly here.
“You were dead.” I turn to the others. “She died.”
“Only barely. Hardly at all,” Shinji says. “You’d have to be a lot more dead than she was to stay dead if we want you alive. Look at your scars, Arthur. You’ve been through several un-survivable encounters. We make sure we take care of our own.”
This is too easy.
I held her as she died. I heard her shuddering final moments. I saw her soul leave. I have been injured in battle before, and yes, I have been mended. But I never died. I never left my body the way she left hers.
There’s something wrong about her, I realize.
I noticed it right away, subconsciously.
She is smiling.
Lydia does not smile. She is also holding a tray of food. Lydia does not serve snacks, not even to those who designed the Artifice. Most of all, Lydia does not hug. Whatever I hugged just now is not Lydia. It might bear a strong resemblance to her, but it’s not her.
Grief surges back in twice as bitterly for having experienced a brief respite of hope. The men in this room believe they can fix everything with sufficient technology. But they can’t. They couldn’t fix my eyes properly, and they can’t bring Lydia back.
The creature who is wearing Lydia like a suit serves us while I try not to be visibly repulsed by it. I am disgusted to my core. It is hard not to come to the conclusion that everything I have ever believed in and fought for is a lie. It is even harder not to come to the conclusion that Lance was right. I have been so blinded by my belief in the Artifice.
The Artifice is supposed to be an intellect unaffected by any human influence. But with the engineers still alive, it is clear that the Artifice is strongly impacted by their thoughts and desires. That means there is no Artifice, not really. What I have called the Artifice is actually an oligarchy.
I have lost a lot today. I have lost Lydia, my most loyal soldier. I have lost Lance, my best friend. And now I have lost the very thing I have believed in and fought for my entire life. My moral compass lies shattered as surely as the lives of those I loved.
There is only one thing left to believe in.
“Mila. Where is she? Was she hurt?”
“She’s close,” Ari says. “We can’t have her in the base with us. You shouldn’t even really be here. And of course, you will have to be sworn to secrecy. Not that you would tell on us anyway.”
“And not that anybody would believe you,” Wallace adds.
“We need to retrieve Mila,” I tell Lydia.
“Oh, no. Not group you. Single you. Lydia stays here. We need a good bodyguard,” Shinji says.
Looking around, they do not need a good bodyguard. They need a maid and perhaps a mommy. Strange thoughts to have about the intellects who brought peace to all mankind. It is clear that they are geniuses who have overcome death itself, but do not know how to clean up after themselves.
Lydia is going to stay here and cater to the whims of the pack of spoiled man-children who are so brilliant they have the entire planet on its knees. On the bright side, she might live effectively forever. And she does not appear to be a prisoner, or unhappy with the situation.
“You won’t be able to tell your bride any of this,” Shinji clarifies. “You can tell her that the rebels were destroyed and the Artifice spared you, but no more than that.”
“And then I just go back to life as I knew it before?”
“Of course. You go back with a new conquest under your belt. This is not the first time you have come back from the dead, as it were. This is just the first time you’ve understood what is happening. You have been a loyal tool, Arthur. You have helped us slice several more heads off the hydra of the rebellion. It will be several generations before anybody dares stand against us again.”
There is a question in my mind, a terrible question that demands I ask it though I know I will not like the answer.
“Is the Artifice real? Or are the decisions it makes yours?”
All three men exchange looks.
“That’s a philosophical question, Arthur,” Shinji says.
“It’s not not real,” Wallace replies. “It’s not a part fridge fortune teller. It is part of a program we’ve co-written, but of course we intervene regularly. Think of it like a self-driving car. Most of the time we just let it run. But we decide the destination.”
I am supposed to be happy about all of this, but the slow horror that has been creeping over me this entire time now consumes me completely. I feel my identity turn to dust beneath the weight of this crushing revelation.
I have protected my family, but at what cost? I now know something no other living person alive does, that the Artifice is both real and not real, that its power is in fact nothing more than hidden tyranny, and that there will always be those willing to serve it. Like myself. I am as deeply indebted to this as I can be.
“Go forth and multiply, Archon-General Darken,” Patel says. “Enjoy your bride, and the baby to come. Breed us another generation of faithful servants.”
Have a nice day!
The slogan mocks me from a half-crumpled bag of what used to be called fast food as I step out of the home of the Artifice, my illusions shattered, my life in ruins, the world itself a different place than it was before I walked into the remains of that cursed restaurant.